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We have been working away on our new game Cardpocalypse for the last few months and I'm super excited to share our announcement trailer with you! I'm sure anyone who enjoyed Guild of Dungeoneering will also be excited by our new game. It's all about collecting cards, making best friends, and saving the world…

Check out the wonderful trailer:

Kudos to Tommy Buckley who composed the track in the trailer, and to Jason Paige who sang it. (You may know Jason's voice from the Pokemon theme tune!)

Here at Gambrinous we've been busy creating the mobile version of Guild of Dungeoneering for the last age. The good news is that it's almost ready!

The dev team, glad not to be in the dungeon themselves!

Mobile Edition

This is a pretty faithful port of the PC version of the game. As it's all turn based and using simple controls it's been quite straightforward to make work on a touch screen. The only fiddly bit has been keeping things legible on phones, which has meant a redesign of a few screens.

We've got it running now on tablets AND phones, both iOS and Android. We aren't quite ready to announce our launch date but will do so quite soon.

In the meantime, we're planning a closed beta test so if you want to help out please fill out your details over here.

What else is coming?

We haven't forgotten about Trophy Trial mode – that's just been put on the back burner temporarily while we finish up mobile edition. We'll get back to that once we launch on iOS and Android. We've also started work on a new expansion pack, similar in size to Pirate's Cove. More news on that soon!

As always, a big thank you to everyone who's supported our game and made all of this possible!

Today I want to talk a bit more about the thing you do the most in Guild of Dungeoneering: send out your expendable minions valued guild members on Quests!

Time For An Adventure

You start the game with a tiny guild and a single loyal follower, the Chump. And there's just one Adventure available, which is a pretty easy one that acts as a nice introduction to the game. Adventures are places you can send your dungeoneers to try and tackle Quests. Most adventures feature a series of quests you need to tackle in order, though there are some that just have a single quest. The final quest in an adventure is always a boss battle.

Here's what the world map looks like when you just have that introductory adventure to attempt.

Cloudy with chance of tutorial.

As soon as you beat this first adventure, taking down your first boss, you unlock three further adventures. So from now on you have a bit of choice about which ones you want to try next. And as you beat these ones, more unlock!

OK that's more like it!

Always Be Questin'

Click on any adventure icon on the world map and you get to see the current quest for that location. Multi-part adventures should be revisited after each victory until you beat the boss and clear the adventure. Here's that starting adventure… of course since it's your first task we couldn't resist sending you off to deal with some rats!

Seriously? Rats??

This is also where you select which of your dungeoneers to send on the quest, and of course where you pick a blessing. Blessings are part of the unlock system – make sure to unlock at least one early on. They give your dungeoneer a bonus for that particular quest run.

Here's an example of a multipart adventure before you beat the first Quest and then just before taking on the final boss Quest.

Embro! I remember him from the playable alpha!

Time for revenge, Embro!

So How Do I Win Again?

Within any particular quest you'll see your objectives at the top right. Sometimes they are simple, like this one where you just need to kill any three monsters (with some rats pre-provided).

Please, no more rats!

Sometimes they are a bit more involved. Here we need to steal the Orb of Nosiness, which is protected by that scary looking Eye Beast. And to make it worse we only have 8 turns before he turns us to stone!

Just how nosy can you be without a nose?

Exploring The Campaign Map

As you plunder your way through the campaign map you will get to explore new regions. At first you'll do your questing in The Grasslands, but once that's thoroughly looted you'll get to try the Azca Jungle:

Jungle Fever!

Each region has it's own unique tileset when you are questing there. Check out this sweet jungle action!

Try and get them alone!

Woah! A two-headed ettin, right behind you!

Our third region in the game is the Dwarven Mines, which is full of nasty contraptions.

So. Much. Adventure.

Doesn't look that masterful to me!

Showdown!

And of course we have a finale adventure once you've battled your way through all three regions. I won't spoil it for you!

Following up from my last post which covered how you upgrade your Guild, today I'd like to talk a little bit about how classes work in Guild of Dungeoneering.

Character Classes

Hero archetypes aka classes are as old as the hills. It's a concept that lets you say that this hero is good at healing and that one is better at smashing faces and basically everyone gets it straight away. So naturally we're using classes in Guild of Dungeoneering! We do have a couple of twists. Firstly a lot of our classes don't sound like the regular fantasy RPG classes as we're willing to let a little humour invade this sometimes overly serious genre. Secondly since heroes always get reset (you can level-up in a single dungeon run, but once you are back in the guild it's back to their starting stats) we are using the unlocking of new classes as a replacement for how you might level-up a single hero in other games. Essentially your guild is the hero you are role-playing as in Guild of Dungeoneering, and thus that's what you level up and customise.

But lets talk a bit about the actual hero classes you'll be filling your guild with. Lets start with the Chump which is the not-very-good dungeoneer you start out with.

The Chump

The Chump. Not the sharpest tool in the guild's toolbox.

Every character class comes with six cards comprising their starting battle deck. These are the moves you'll be using in combat, and you are able to add to them by finding equipment on dungeon runs. But those starting six are very important. Unfortunately theChump's battle deck is pretty lackluster.

Keep your eyes open when you're punching!

So that's three weak attacks (that's the icon for 1 physical damage), one ok attack and then two weak blocks. And to add to that Chumps have no special abilities. Better find them some sweet loot as soon as possible if you want to beat any bosses. On the plus side they are so awful that they make everyone else look pretty good!

The Cat Burglar

I hope you like cat puns. I meow I do!

The Cat Burglar is one of four classes you can unlock quite early on in the game, what we call the Tier 1 classes (the chump is the only Tier 0 class). Each of the four has it's own special playstyle, strengths and weaknesses so you are very likely to find some of them are better for particular adventures. What does the Cat Burglar's combat deck look like?

Who throws a cat? Honestly!?

So the Cat Burglar is specialised around dealing out physical damage only, including an unblockable attack (pounce), a quick attack (scratch) and two self-buffs (catnip) which let you bide your time before striking even harder – ie when a monster's guard is down and they don't have a block ready. Their downside is that they have absolutely no blocking in their starting deck. Maybe something you could shore up with some equipment? Or you could push their specialty even more with some more quick attacks. The choice is yours! And they do have one starting trait called [Covetous] which gives them one additional choice of loot card after each battle – so you will be more likely to be able to specialise them in a given dungeon run.

The (Aging) Barbarian

A barbarian? Sounds pretty powerful! Woah – this one seems a bit OLD

The Barbarian is one of our Tier 2 classes that becomes available a little further into the game. It sounds like a regular fantasy class but we've decided to make the ones that join YOUR guild really, really old. Well, beggars can't be choosers you know! So what's their battle deck look like?

Remember: every time you play the howl card you should also howl in real life!

Ok, that's a LOT of damage output with 4 cards dealing two physical damage and one even doing three, though a lot of them come with a penalty where the barbarian also hurts themself. Withstand is a unique card which stops them dying for the next two rounds – very powerful! They also start with a special trait called [Deathwish] which gives them +2 health in any battle against a monster of higher level. Finally their AI is special in that they are drawn to attack monsters that are of higher level than themself (most dungeoneers try and avoid these monsters). These things all add up to a class that can take down monsters other classes wouldn't have a hope against early on in dungeon runs. But do Barbarians have the late-dungeon staying power those other classes have? Well I guess you'll have to see!

Adventures & Quests

That's just a quick peek at three classes. There's 14 different ones in the game for you to enjoy! Join me next time when I talk about the Adventure & Quest system and the world map.

Wow do we ever have a lot of news all at once today. Yes we do! Lets get right into it shall we?

Release Date: July 14th!

The game is coming out on July 14th! Get excited! Do a little dungeoneering dance. Roll some dice! Yeah!

New Trailer!

Feast your eyes and ears on this beauty. And then share it with your friends!

Preorders, with a lovely little bonus!

You can preorder the game right now from Steam, GOG or Humble for $14.99 | €14.99 | £10.99 or so. And as a very special thank you to everyone who does so we are going to give you our first Adventure Pack for free when it comes out a few months after launch. It's called Pirates Cove and will add some extra adventures, loot and dungeoneers to the mix.

Just wanted to show you guys a little bit from the Guild side of the game as til now we've been so focused on the Dungeoneering side.

The whole metagame / strategic side of things is about your guild. You get to upgrade it by using the spoils of successful (and unsuccessful) dungeoneering by your hapless heroes. How you specialise your guild is up to you though. There are three main branches of upgrades: Might,Magic, and Loot. Might and Magic both give you new character classes and special blessings with a general theme of physical vs magical styles. Loot on the other hand tends to unlock more equipment your dungeoneers can find in dungeons, so it's quite different.

Click for bigger

A lot of upgrades give you new rooms for your guild! These can be placed anywhere you like so how your guild looks is up to you. We tried to make the guild look quite distinctive compared to the usual dungeons. What do you think?

Wait.. is that a mime!?

There's also some special rooms you need to earn: the Graveyard and the Trophy Room. It's very likely that by the time you finish the game your graveyard will have quite the collection of former dungeoneers.

Not to worry, we can hire plenty more!

And taking down bosses gives you a fun little keepsake in your trophy room!

Bravely stealing shampoo from bosses' treasure chambers.

Since your dungeoneers never permanently level up, how do you progress? Well it's all via levelling up your guild instead. Unlocking more powerful classes is how you get better dungeoneers (or in some cases, just differently specialised ones). I'm going to show off some of the character classes in more detail in the next update.

Also on the RELEASE DATE, stay tuned we should have an announcement on that very soon!

At the start of February I flew into Amsterdam to attend Casual Connect as an Indie Prize finalist. At the time I was happy to spend a few days with our composer Steve who was living in Amsterdam and to meet some of the other devs showcasing their games. I didn't expect to get anything else from the rest of the show, in all honesty. However we got a very nice surprise when Guild of Dungeoneering scooped up the 'Most Promising In Development' award! Oh yeah!

A fancy bit of glassware!

This is our first time winning any kind of award so it was super exciting for us. Here's myself and Steve up on stage accepting the award.

Woot!

Casual Connect? Sounds Legit.

Casual Connect sounds more like a speed dating event than a games show. The name comes from the casual gaming genre which blew up in the 2000s. Nowadays those games have essentially moved to mobile, but the name lives on. The show itself is very business oriented, with most exhibitors and talks focused on monetisation strategies for F2P games and the like; ie not exactly a match for my kind of game development. However a couple of years ago they started the Indie Prize showcase which is really cool. They selected 120 game devs to be able to showcase their games in a prominent spot in the middle of the show floor, and on the final day they handed out about 10 prizes.

That's a LOT of indie games!

That's a whole LOAD of games in the indie prize zone so as you can see you only get about half a table of space each. We just turned up with my laptop showing the game (that's a far cry from the heavily branded setup we had at PAX). There's no space for anything more than that, which is a shame, but on the other hand it means there is an absolute butt load of games on display. It took me all three days to get around and try and chat to most of the devs, but it was very worthwhile for that alone. There's some really great games out there that you have never heard of!

Two weeks ago I was able to attend my first ever PAX, which is a massive and beloved consumer gaming show. The kind that attracts real gaming fans who will happily give up their weekend, pay for tickets, and queue in their thousands to be the first ones into the show. The kind that sells out of tickets on a regular basis. Just attending would have been extremely interesting to me but I had the opportunity to do something even more incredible: I was able to showcase the game I'm working on to thousands of potential fans. WOW. Read on for my full postmortem.